Posts Tagged ‘1st corinthians 13’

The greatest commandment is “Love the Lord God with all your heart soul mind and strength”(Mathew 22 and Mark 12) and Loving your neighbor as yourself(Love people) (Mathew 22 and Mark 12Galatians 5:13-14). I think we blow over this verse all to often because in our culture the word Love is so overused. We read it and just brush over it and assume we know what it means. I say assume because if we really knew what it meant we would be acting very differently. Ask yourself “what dose it look like to Love God or to Love people?” You see I think we all know the answer to those questions but we hesitate to state them because we don’t want to feel convicted over our lack of Love. If you have ever actoully read your Bible then you really don’t have an excuse. To often do we reject truth and say “we don’t know” to make us feel better about our lack of action.

Any way back to my main topic of Loving God and Loving people. When I looked at it myself I came to the conclusion that the key to Love is in 1st Corinthians 13:4-8 “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends..” Like Francis Chan says in his book Crazy Love take the word Love in those verses and replace it with your name. When you read it in that way you instantly know what parts of Love you need to work on. You read and when you cross a part like “Shaun does not insist on his own way” you feel convicted because you know that you struggle with not doing things your way. Allot of times unless you have great standing with me I struggle with no doing it my way. Unless you can show me why your way is better is am reluctant to change. Now this is not me saying to be a push over and never stand for an idea you have but when your only reason for having your way is simply because its yours you need to check yourself.

Along with this I have found selflessness to be a root part in Love. Look at the versus again, its full of allot of submitting your will; patient and kind, not insist on its own way, and caring about how actions effect others; does not rejoice at wrongdoing, not envy or boast ect. The biggest act of selflessness we do, the complete giving up and submission of ourselves, should be directed at the one and only God. God wants us to Love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength! To do that we need to Give Him our all.

As my Love for God has grown so has my heart also been softened to Love people more. There is a reason that Love God is first then Love you neighbor is second. the reason is that if you Love God then you will Love people, and if you Love people the rest of the commandments will fall into place. As I grow here at Off the Wall I have seen this to be true. As God has broken my heart from its hardened rock into soft flesh with great feeling for Him so has my Heart broken for people. My heart breaks for suffering people and especially suffering children. Invisible Children has really been on my heart lately with it’s stand ageist this man who forces them into his army and forges evil into children. I have no money to give to them to help but I have joined the force of spreading awareness of this issue so that people with the resources to help will see and help however they can. Issues like this wouldn’t effect me so powerfully unless my Love for God and people had grown to the place it is now. Before I would hear these things and I would feel sad but get over it and move on, but now it’s impossible for me to just move on! When I am aware of such suffering the choice not to act is a nonexistent option. Love is to strong to sit there and do nothing.

For those who were wondering why I keep capitalizing the “L” in “Love” I do so because I am referring to the Overflowing Love from God. I capitalize it because its something directly connected to God so I capitalize it. True Love comes from God and the word holds importance.